2 Dinners one Meat--Roast and BBQ Beef

One of the things I like most when it comes to cooking is saving time.  This weekend I made a roast for dinner on Friday and then we had BBQ Beef Sandwiches for dinner on Sunday.  Typically I use a chuck roast, but when I thawed my roast out on Thursday night, I realized I pulled a London Broil roast out.  We usually buy London Broil for my husband to make his Grandma's Beef Jerky, but this time it was used for roast.  I am not a fan of Beef Jerky, but I will post our recipe on here next time my husband makes it :)  One of the things I learned about picking a roast is to find one that is marbled with fat.  All roasts will have some fat, but you want some swirled in the middle of the roast and not all around the outside--this will give you more flavor and make the roast even more tender.

Pot Roast:

For my roast, I used the following recipe:

Chuck roast (or whatever you have available)--about 3 pounds
16 oz. baby carrots
12 oz. can of Pepsi, coke, Dr. pepper (I've used them all and I've used generic versions as well)
1 package of onion soup mix

I throw all of this in the crock pot and cook on low for about 8-10 hours.  When I made it this time, I also added a pack of brown gravy mix--the roast was good, but didn't taste a whole lot different from the recipe above so that's why I didn't include it in the ingredients.  This is stuff we almost always have on hand so it makes it easy to just throw it in the crock pot and forget about it.

Gram's BBQ Beef:

We didn't eat all of the roast so instead of freezing it or eating leftovers, I decided to turn it into my husband's Grandma's BBQ Beef.  Since we already ate some of the roast and it was only about 2 1/2 pounds to begin with, I cut the following recipe in half.  But here is the full recipe she used for a 4 pound chuck roast:

Sauce:
1 c. chopped onion
1/2 stick margarine
1/2 c. vinegar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. garlic
1 Tbsp. horseradish
2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 Tbsp. dry mustard
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 c. chili sauce
1 c. tomato sauce

If you were just making this recipe for the BBQ Beef, you'd cook the chuck roast in the crock pot with 1/2 cup of water until it falls apart.  Take out all of the fat and put in a regular pan on the stove and add the sauce ingredients listed above. 

For us, we already had the roast cooked so I just shredded it and added the sauce.  We always put our BBQ Beef on buns and have sandwiches.